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''Meerkat Manor'' is a British television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International that premiered in September 2005 and ran for four series until its cancellation in August 2008. Blending more traditional animal documentary style footage with dramatic narration, the series told the story of the Whiskers, one of more than a dozen families of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert being studied as part of the Kalahari Meerkat Project, a long-term field study into the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of the cooperative nature of meerkats. The original programme was narrated by Bill Nighy, with the narration redubbed by Mike Goldman for the Australian airings and Sean Astin for the American broadcasts. The fourth series, subtitled ''The Next Generation'', saw Stockard Channing replacing Astin as the narrator in the American dubbing. ''Meerkat Manor'' premiered in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2005, and the first 13-episode series concluded on 24 October 2005. With the success of the programme in the United Kingdom, Animal Planet started broadcasting it on its national channels in Australia, Canada, and the US. It has since been rebroadcast in more than 160 other countries. The fourth, and final, series aired initially in the United States from 6 June 2008〔 to 22 August 2008. In August 2009, it was reported that the programme had been cancelled. Although the show faced criticism from viewers for not intervening when a meerkat was injured and faced death, as a whole, ''Meerkat Manor'' enjoyed considerable success and was Animal Planet's top series in October 2007, both on the cable channel and through its video-on-demand service. The show's experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques and allowed viewers a long term, intimate look into the lives of its meerkat stars, breaking the traditional wall between viewer and subject found with most documentaries. In 2007, ''Meerkat Manor'' was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards. It has won three awards at the 2006 Omni Awards, and at the 2006 and 2007 New York Festivals Award Galas. The first three series of the programme have been released to DVD in both Region 1 and Region 2. In 2007, a book entitled ''Meerkat Manor – The Story of Flower of the Kalahari'' was released in the UK, detailing the life of Flower and the Whiskers before the series' filming began. A television film, ''Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins'', documenting Flower's birth and rise to matriarch of the Whiskers aired on Animal Planet on 25 May 2008. == Production details == ''Meerkat Manor'' was created by Caroline Hawkins, executive producer and series editor at Oxford Scientific Films, and commissioned for Animal Planet International by executive producer and commissioning editor Mark Wild. Filming for a 13-episode series took seven to eight months, and was limited to the Kalahari spring and summer seasons, as meerkats are less active during winter.〔 Series three was filmed from November 2006 through April 2007, and Series four began filming in October 2007. Most scenes were filmed on location at the Kuruman River Reserve, where the Kalahari Meerkat Project that the meerkats are a part of is based. However, the meerkats seen in commercials and on the show's website were not the same animals portrayed in ''Meerkat Manor''. Instead, tamer-rescued meerkats from the Fellow Earthlings' Wildlife Center were filmed against a green screen. The show was primarily filmed using Sony DSR-570 cameras, although special equipment was needed for some unique footage. For scenes inside the animals' burrows, mini fibre-optic infra-red cameras were employed; wide-angle shots were filmed with a seven-metre crane and a remote-controlled camera platform.〔〔 An off-camera wireless microphone was also used to record many meerkat vocalizations, only partially audible to cameras' on-board systems.〔 Most filming was done by a single cameraman and a single sound engineer; researchers have required a minimal human presence to avoid stressing the animals.〔 Eye-level shots were difficult to achieve at times, due to the meerkats' small size and the limited height of even the smallest tripods. For tracking purposes by the researchers, the dominant female of each group is fitted with a radio collar, as are some dominant and roaming males. The meerkats – especially younger animals – are marked with dye to differentiate them.〔 As the meerkats are habituated, they would tend to ignore the camera crew as long as their "personal space" was respected.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Meerkat Manor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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